بگو سیب و بمیر فصل 25

Say Cheese and Die! - Chapter 25

“Shari—is it really you?” Greg shouted into the phone.

“Yeah. It’s me!” She sounded as surprised as he did.

“But how? I mean—” His mind was racing. He didn’t know what to say.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Shari told him. And then she said, “Hold on a minute.” And he heard her step away from the phone to talk to her mother. “Mom—stop crying already. Mom—it’s really me. I’m home.”

A few seconds later, she came back on the line. “I’ve been home for two hours, and Mom’s still crying and carrying on.”

“I feel like crying, too,” Greg admitted. “I—I just can’t believe it! Shari, where were you?”

The line was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know,” she answered finally.

“Huh?”

“I really don’t. It was just so weird, Greg. One minute, there I was at my birthday party. The next minute, I was standing in front of my house. And it was two days later. But I don’t remember being away. Or being anywhere else. I don’t remember anything at all.”

“You don’t remember going away? Or coming back?” Greg asked.

“No. Nothing,” Shari said, her voice trembling.

“Shari, those pictures I took of you—remember? With the weird camera? You were invisible in them—”

“And then I disappeared,” she said, finishing his thought.

“Shari, do you think—?”

“I don’t know,” she replied quickly. “I—I have to get off now. The police are here. They want to question me. What am I going to tell them? They’re going to think I had amnesia or flipped out or something.”

“I—I don’t know,” Greg said, completely bewildered. “We have to talk. The camera—”

“I can’t now,” she told him. “Maybe tomorrow. Okay?” She called to her mother that she was coming. “Bye, Greg. See you.” And then she hung up.

Greg replaced the receiver but sat on the edge of his bed staring at the phone for a long time.

Shari was back.

She’d been back about two hours.

Two hours. Two hours. Two hours.

He turned his eyes to the clock radio beside the phone.

Just two hours before, he had ripped up the two snapshots of an invisible Shari.

His mind whirred with wild ideas, insane ideas.

Had he brought Shari back by ripping up the photos?

Did this mean that the camera caused her to disappear? That the camera caused all of the terrible things that showed up in its snapshots?

Greg stared at the phone for a long time, thinking hard.

He knew what he had to do. He had to talk to Shari. And he had to return the camera.

He met Shari on the playground the next afternoon. The sun floated high in a cloudless sky. Eight or nine kids were engaged in a noisy brawl of a soccer game, running one way, then the other across the outfield of the baseball diamond.

“Hey—you look like you !” Greg exclaimed as Shari came jogging up to where he stood beside the bleachers. He pinched her arm. “Yeah. It’s you, okay.”

She didn’t smile. “I feel fine,” she told him, rubbing her arm. “Just confused. And tired. The police asked me questions for hours. And when they finally went away, my parents started in.”

“Sorry,” Greg said quietly, staring down at his sneakers.

“I think Mom and Dad believe somehow it’s my fault that I disappeared,” Shari said, resting her back against the side of the bleachers, shaking her head.

“It’s the camera’s fault,” Greg muttered. He raised his eyes to hers. “The camera is evil.”

Shari shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know what to think. I really don’t.”

He showed her the snapshot, the one showing the two of them on the playground staring in horror as a shadow crept over them.

“How weird,” Shari exclaimed, studying it hard.

“I want to take the camera back to the Coffman house,” Greg said heatedly. “I can go home and get it now. Will you help me? Will you come with me?”

Shari started to reply but stopped.

They both saw the dark shadow move, sliding toward them quickly, silently, over the grass.

And then they saw the man dressed all in black, his spindly legs pumping hard as he came at them.

Spidey!

Greg grabbed Shari’s hand, frozen in fear.

He and Shari gaped in terror as Spidey’s slithering shadow crept over them.